SAN FRANCISCO–Jurors must follow the law–not their consciences–even when they strongly believe the law will produce an unjust result, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The court rejected a centuries-old doctrine called “jury nullification,” which gives jurors the power to follow their convictions rather than the law.

“A nullifying jury is essentially a lawless jury,” Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote for a unanimous court.

Nullification, a doctrine rooted in old English law, has been debated by judges, lawyers and legal scholars for decades. In recent years, advocates of nullification have seen it as a weapon against unpopular tax laws and increasingly harsh criminal sentences.

Monday’s ruling was the first in which the state high court directly confronted the principle. The court held that a judge properly excused a juror who said he could not convict an 18-year-old man of unlawful sex with a minor–the defendant’s 16-year-old former girlfriend.

“Encouraging a jury to nullify a law it finds unjust or to act as the ‘conscience of the community’ by disregarding the court’s instructions may sound lofty,” George wrote, “but such unchecked and unreviewable power can lead to verdicts based upon bigotry and racism.”

I find it hilarious that the judge says nullification might be used on behalf of bigotry and racism considering no case of bigotry or racism has ever been recorded in any instance of a jury nullifying a verdict.

IN FACT – jury nullification of the fugitive slave laws by the North in the years leading up to the Civil War was major factor leading to the secession!

To put it another way, if the CA jury rules has been in place in the period leading up to the Civil War, it is highly unlikely that the North would have nullified the fugitive slave laws.

It is also unlikely that slavery would have ended, since the free states of the North were what gave the slaves a place to run to. Prior to the North nullifying the laws, the slaves couldn’t flee because there was no place to flee to!

I also think it is essential to point out that without the State, slavery in the South would have been totally impossible. The slaves were set to the fields and stayed there. They could have fled at any time, but the fact that the State imposed slavery is what prevented them from fleeing. If you have no where to run, where do you flee to?

We know the South seceded primarily because of the North nullifying the fugitive slave laws because all the seceding states clearly tell us this in their articles of secession.

From Georgia:

For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.

From South Carolina:

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

Of course this treasonous court’s ruling utterly precludes California juries from ever nullifying any ridiculous drug laws or other heinous encroachments of the people’s liberty. When the State can hand pick its jurors, tyranny is sure to follow.